Christmas Vacation is a holiday movie classic.
“Nobody’s leaving! Nobody’s walking out on this fun old fashioned family Christmas! Noooo, No, We’re all in this together!” – Clark Griswold
And we are in this together.
There is no doubt that COVID has shown us the importance of moving to a community mindset. In 2022, expect to see an extreme focus on building more resilient supply chains to support the community. In fact, I think the supply chain revolution is finally here. This will be driven through the adoption of cloud-based technologies and by leveraging data analytics like never before. Hospitals must drive transparency to help the industry prepare for the next crisis.
The entire ecosystem has changed as it relates to healthcare policy, care delivery, and sourcing. Due to product availability issues, hospitals have made a sharp right-hand turn to direct sourcing strategies. There is no doubt they will continue to open new channels to prevent disaster and leverage data to drive unity between physicians, manufacturers, distributors, GPO’s and payers.
Covid exposes the breakpoints in the healthcare supply chain so clearly that hospitals around the country are going through a true transformation right now. How important is it for hospitals to know every manufacturer in the market that makes a specific product? It is now a necessity.
We know that hospitals with stronger balance sheets drive M&A activity. The supply chain plays a pivotal role in helping to facilitate the seamless integration of data and processes during mergers and acquisitions. One requisitioning platform no matter the ERP/MMIS is a necessity for large organizations acquiring new facilities (acute and non-acute) but they must have a solid on-demand source for industry data containing all the procure to pay attributes to complete the processes (all the way down to the claim). Formulary guided procurement with the ability to find functional equivalents (or whatever data attributes you need) from a reliable industry data repository, is the new norm and a very obtainable goal.
The healthcare revolution is definitely here and I’m so excited to be a part of it in 2022. The catalyst being Covid – am I surprised by it?
“Surprised, Eddie? If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised.” – Clark Griswold
Covid is our reality, and through this darkness, my hope this Christmas is that everyone reading this can find some humor in all the chaos. We are in this together. I’m sure of it.
Happy Holidays from Meperia!
About the Author
Lee Ann McWhorter is the Vice President of Business Development at Meperia. Her primary goals are to reduce data error, reduce cost and improve patient safety in the healthcare industry. Lee Ann has worked with the founders of Meperia for over 16 years and understands the breakpoints in the healthcare supply chain and the need for unbiased, quality data moving forward. For more information about Meperia please reach out to lmcwhorter@meperia.com.